Bradford Courier

The '"Bradford Courier was over a hundred years old, the last survivor of a newspaper war that had gone on for close to forty years back around the turn of the century, with four newspapers involved. It is a little country weekly usually running eight full-size pages, sometimes more and sometimes less; it occupied a single-story block building toward the edge of downtown, a block or so up the street from the Spee-D-Mart. It is no longer printed on site -- it hadn't been since the early 1960s -- so much of the building was little used anymore. The majority of the operation was concentrated in a front room, where there were several computers sitting on several extraordinarily messy desks."HS11 The paper is actually printed in Hawthorne.HS10

It had once employed five full-time and two part-time employees. By 2000 it was just the editor Lloyd Weber, an English teacher named Harbison who did sports,PUTP38, the advertising saleswoman Hazel Perkins and Emily Holst. Emily first was employed covering the Bradford Chamber of Commerce, but kept expanding her coverage and was even scheduled to learn how to prepare the paper for printing, which would allow Lloyd to take a vacation.HS24

Weber experienced a serious heart attack in February 2002, and decided to retire.PUTP35 On April 1, 2002, Weber sold the paper to a corporation composed of Dave Patterson and Emily. Dave would provide the financing, and become the publisher and Chairman; while Emily would be the majority owner (with a loan from Dave), the editor and the CEO.PUTP38